Books for Prep | |
 - Decent, but need more materials.It's good that it gives you six practice tests, so that you can become more familiar with the material. The quantitative comparison section (and the math section in general) is something that you can coach pretty quickly just with repetition. However, I must warn you, there are a couple of typos, and it can be very frustrating. The verbal section I found is decent. The reading comprehension material is good, as the explanations section is pretty detailed and reasonable. The vocabulary tested on in the book is varies greatly, sometimes it is insultingly easy, sometimes it comes out of nowhere, and unfortunately, the explanations for this section is not as clear or as comprehensive as I would like. You definitely need to get a dictionary or otherwise find supplemental material. I didn't use the software at all. It isn't appealing, and causes problems with my computer for some reason. I might try again, but I gave up on using it. Rating:  - Great for V & Q sections.I improved my GRE from 990 (Q:550, V:440) to 1320 (Q:700, V: 620) using nothing but this book! You can't look at this book as an 'ultimate answer' but it will help you to understand how to work the Quanititaive problems and there are good explanations for each answer. The idea is to actually prepare, going through each question you get wrong and understanding how to do it in the future. The verbal questions are great practice, I made up note cards for every word I didn't know. The practice writing section was ok, but I would get another book that focuses specifically on writing (I improved from 4.5 to 5 using this book). Good Luck! Rating: - Verbal section worth the moneyI used mainly the verbal section, particularly the "Explanations of Answers" segment to boost my testing-taking skills. Unfortunately, both the "Anaylitical Writing" and "Reading Comprehension" segments are below average and much easier than the actual test, thus one must seek other resources in order to perform well, which I did, in the overall GRE verbal test. Rating: - Average softwareCAUTION!: This book/CD has EXCACTLY the same CD/software like the "Gre General Cbt Testbuster (Testbuster)". I bought both of them and I wasted my money since I care only for the CD/software. I contains three CATS which is good but it is not even in my top 5 recommendations for the GRE. Rating:  - Poor book, software,Neither the book nor the software is worth the time and money for this combination. The book includes the long pencil and paper examples one expects for the old pencil and paper test. There are a few updates for the new computer based test; mostly just mentioning what to expect. The entire section on the essay portion of the GRE is four pages followed by thirty pages of general grammer review. The mathematics review is more solid, but there are some mistakes in the text. It is a book that is not updated often. The same staleness extends to the software. It works, outside of the occasional fatal exception error, but provides little help above the minimum. There are only three practice tests; reviewing your mistakes is torturous; and the practice essays are not timed the same way as the real exam. There is no help in guessing your score on the essay portions. Overall, the combination of obsolete material and errors reduces the value to less than nothing. In association with Amazon.com | |